Speech by Sandra Hüller at the opening of Ludwig Rauch's solo exhibition "Portrait and Abstraction" at Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Oct.12.2022
https://mdbk.de/ausstellungen/ludwig-rauch-portrait-and-abstraction/
Good evening, everyone.
It is wonderful to see you here at the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig for the opening of Ludwig Rauch's exhibition "Portrait and Abstraction".
I know that this evening is a special one for Ludwig and that this exhibition venue here in Leipzig is also something special for him. The reason for this is that many things began here for Ludwig Rauch, the human, and for Ludwig Rauch, the artist.
First and foremost: his life, in the Leipzig gynecological clinic not far from here. He grew up in Thuringia and Berlin, but it was here that his career, with all its talents and hopes, but also all its pitfalls and obstacles, began: He studied photojournalism at the University of Leipzig and later photography at the Academy of Visual Arts under Arno Fischer. Leipzig schools in the plural, so to speak. And the latter two actually tell the story of Ludwig's path, which I would like to tell you a little bit about because it is part of this exhibition: the path from photojournalist to artist.
Some lives and some careers unfold like a long, quiet river. One thing follows another, one station after another, one stone building on another.
Then, in other lives, there is that one moment that changes everything. Or, in Ludwig's case, that one picture. He showed it to me. It's a portrait of the Karl Marx Brigade of VEB Elektrokohle Berlin. At the age of 26, Ludwig spent six months photographing the men of the Karl Marx Brigade at Elektrokohle for the magazine NBI. Men working with century-old machines, with cardboard masks over their mouths, struggling against heat and dust to meet standards. When he showed his clients the pictures he had taken with all his enthusiasm and empathy, he was met with horror. His pictures were seen as provocative.
The equipment was too shabby, the machines too old, the rooms too dark, the faces too strained, the whole thing too dirty, too real, too close. They were not approved for publication, and the photographer, who apparently had such a sobering view of the socialist world of work, was permanently banned from publishing in any journalistic media in the GDR.
This was the first time that Ludwig Rauch developed what would become a lifelong artistic theme:
I see what you don't see.
Reality has many forms. Most of it is created in our heads. Everyone sees what they can see, what they want to see, what they need to see.
Even then, Ludwig was fascinated by the visual arts. Art was granted what photography was often denied.
Even then he envied artists. Painters, sculptors, writers and actors, for the opportunity to create their own world and their own image of the world. For the freedom of subjectivity, for the joy of creating with colours and forms, for the gift of independence from supposed truths.
In order to get closer to art, he portrayed artists, visiting hundreds of them in their studios all over the world, some of whom have a connection with Leipzig.
He often wondered whether it was possible to see their art in their faces, and how it was possible to capture something in their portraits: from the art they created, or from their drive, their knowledge, their suffering. Ludwig tried: the homelessness of Klaus Hähner Springmühl, whom he portrayed in a stairwell on his way to the studio, sleeping bag on his lap. He photographed Via Lewandowski, whose pictures follow strict concepts and are created entirely in his head, like a sculpture with his eyes closed. Rosa Loy, with a huge safety pin on her white painting smock, has the aura of the female figures she creates in her portrait. Arno Rink, who painted his way from realism to surrealism, looks like the magician he was in his late work. Neo Rauch, whom Ludwig has portrayed repeatedly since 1988 and who has become a global star and figurehead in the process, seems to melt into his own image in his latest portrait, smiling softly and wisely.
According to Ludwig, the portraits were his first and eternal access to this world. He admires Sigmar Polke for his willingness to experiment and is fascinated by Gerhard Richter, who paints as if he were being photographed. And early on he asked himself: is it possible to do it the other way round: painting with photography? How would that work?
He immerses himself in chemical processes, blotting and gluing, with resin and threads and foils, experimenting with pigments, with gold dust, as in the work 'The Others' from the 'Black-Red-Gold' series exhibited here - with processes of dissolution in a double sense. And he uses the possibilities of digital photography.
The stubbornness with which some photographers defend analogue tools as the only true instruments and see the use of digital tools as a fall from grace has always amazed Ludwig. For him, the digital possibilities offered a further lifting of boundaries, an increase in the artistic freedom he had always longed for and experimented with. And it allowed him to compose all the photographic memories of decades, the snippets and fragments that remained in his brain and soul, into his images.
Memories are his subject. Neurologists know that memories are not something that lie around in our brains like a photo album in a cupboard that you just have to find and open, and then everything is there again, just as it was. No, memories are resurrected the moment they are recalled. They adapt, they change, they grow or shrink, they bathe things in a warmer light or in horror, depending on the circumstances, they come together again and make sense, often only in retrospect. Ludwig forms his pictures from photographic memories. And then they are suddenly present and sometimes more current than one would like to bear.
The images transcend the boundaries of the medium of photography, the boundaries of logic and the boundaries of the eternal cycle of cause and effect. We see the peace of a water corpse covered with water lilies, we sympathize with a rock face that looks as if it is licking its wounds. We see plants that suddenly dance, wave their arms, have faces and thus a soul. The cheerful bird creatures that go about their business in "Nordic Walking" are not birds at all. They are stems, flowers, somewhat withered, discovered in a theatre. The world is what we see in it. Not only, but also.
Ludwig Rauch's paintings are parallel universes, sometimes heavy, sometimes weightless, multidimensional and sensual. The truth of these paintings does not lie in clear forms or solid bodies. Their truth is the feelings, the visions, even the fears of a moment, the joys of a second, the happiness and the unhappiness, they process our time, all the many fragments of images, information, feelings of a reality that only pretends to be logical, stringent and calculable. And they process our legacies.
We leave traces, even when we don't want to.
And at a time when there is a lot of talk about our footprint, a series like Current Traces is perhaps salutary, perhaps even cheerful. The fact that the pictures almost made themselves may not be something you would normally say, but I am saying it now because it says something about Ludwig's view and about art itself: if you are an artist, you have to want to create, that is true, but even more true: if you are an artist, you have to want to see. You have to take other, sometimes strange, perspectives seriously, you have to look down and back and not always up and forward. You have to make the small big and the big small, so that you can rethink the world, your world, and surprise yourself and your audience.
Ludwig had treated his steel frames with pigmented oil some time ago to prevent them from rusting. And to prevent damage to the studio floor, he had put cardboard underneath. Later he wanted to dispose of the cardboard. And took another look. He discovered that the combination of oil, dirt, and pigment had created stamp-sized landscapes on the light cardboard. See for yourself what happened to it.
Not everything that looks intentional is intentional, and many things that look like chance are not. Whether the blades of grass bend on purpose, as they do in "natural lines" number two, is unknown, as are many other delightful escapades of nature, but the funny curls of the threads with which the vines seek support from others are not unintentional voltes, but part of a plan. Revealing this plan, leaving out all distractions and celebrating it through its staging, is art.
As in real life, omission becomes more important than addition in the latest pictures. The concrete narrative becomes smaller, abstraction and concentration become larger. This brings us to the egg and also to the end of this short lecture: the oval, round and spatial, individual and abstract at the same time, always similar but never the same, has not only the perfect aesthetic. It is a primordial symbol of life, of emergence, of hope for the new, of curiosity about what is to come. One person may be closest to the digital egg, another to the egg that wants to reconcile black and red, another to the egg under ice.
The beauty of these images is that they are only suggestions, and most of them exist only in our imaginations anyway.
But the seahorse is real. It may not live in this gold-encrusted marbled egg, but in the aquarium of the Berlin Zoo, where Ludwig found it after its midday nap, but it may also spread cheerfulness and a feeling of grace and confidence among you.
But that's up to you. Everyone sees what they can see, what they want to see, what they need to see in these pictures and in general.